


More Than Just a Spider

by Emberblaze



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Peter Parker is a Genius, Peter Parker is more than just Spiderman
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-09-30 22:02:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emberblaze/pseuds/Emberblaze
Summary: At times, Peter Parker forgets that he's more than just a web-slinging, super-strong superhero. He's also pretty smart.Sometimes, it takes a dangerous villain to remind him (and his enemies) of that.





	1. Chapter 1

Peter sighed.  
  
He was sitting upside down on...well, something. It was dark out, but Peter assumed it was some sort of metal beam. His knees were pulled close to his chest, with his arms holding them in place, and his breathing was slightly accelerated.  
  
Gunshots sounded below him, and one pinged on the bar next to him. He flinched involuntarily, but made no noise.  
  
Of _course_ his suit would malfunction in the middle of a fight. It would be way too easy for it to just function as normal.  
  
The night was eerily silent, other than the gunshots that sometimes pierced the air. No lights were on in the entire town, which made sense-- ghost towns, by definition, were abandoned-- so Peter's vision was tinted green with the night vision goggles in his suit.  
  
He tugged his right leg away from the beam experimentally, but nothing happened. Well, to be precise, there was a sharp shock from the sensors on the foot of his suit, and the beam itself creaked slightly, but his foot did not move.  
  
"Karen?" he whispered for the fifth time. "Karen, you there?"  
  
There was a slight flicker in his goggles, but no response.  
  
He was alone.  
  
He wasn't quite sure what these people had done to him, but it was something, that was for sure. The timing was way too convenient to just be a normal break-down (not that ANY mistakes in his suit could be considered normal, anyway) not to mention that it was two completely different systems that got shut down-- Karen, and the light coating of webfluid on his feet, which had been sent into overdrive and locked his feet into place.  
  
Peter knew that it was almost certainly the product of the tiny cylinder that he now held in his hand. It was clearly some sort of virus, something that just by touching his suit, could hack into it and mess with the systems inside.  
  
Which was worrisome. Peter's suit had the same firewalls as Tony's, meaning that Iron Man was in trouble, too.  
  
There were another three gunshots. Distantly, Peter heard someone say "I'm sure it worked, he should be stuck on a wall somewhere." Which confirmed his theory.  
  
He wasn't sure why these people though shooting randomly would be the best way to find someone stuck in the dark, but he wasn't complaining about fighting idiotic villians.  
  
Peter looked at the disk in his hand, which he'd yanked off his back, with a mixture of terror and anger slowly taking over him. This thing had taken out Spiderman without a fight.  
  
Then he realized something, and slowly smiled.  
  
It had taken out _Spiderman_.  
  
Peter Parker was alive and kicking.  
  
He flipped over the disk, inspecting it closely. He ran his finger along the device, stopped when he felt something, and zoomed in on the spot (thanking all that was holy that he still had his interface). There were three tiny spikes of metal poking out of the device in a triangle. Clearly, that was how it had gotten in to the system.  
  
He thought he saw a faint outline of a circle around the spikes, covering almost the entire back. He ran his finger there, and indeed, there was a groove. He tapped at it carefully, before attacking it with earnest.  
  
First he tried twisting it, digging his fingernails into the grooves and turning it first one way, then the other. He tried pressing it in, but didn't feel a spring, then carefully rerouted some of the power from his suit into the beam to make an electromagnet. Still, there was no response-- the disk was not ferromagnetic.  
  
Finally, he touched it to the still-buzzing beams, thankful that he'd made his suit a strong insulator.  
  
There was a click.  
  
Excitedly, Peter pulled the disk off of the beam, then quickly shut off the electric flow (wincing as the results of the rerouted power showed themselves, jolting a few of his touch sensors and killing a corner of his vision). He pulled off the now-disconnected back of the disk with ease, setting it down gently on the top of the beam.  
  
The inside of the disk was intricate, yes, but he understood it-- in theory. If he hadn't had the results of the device freezing him in place and taking out his A.I., he'd be nearly lost as to how to fix it, but as it was, he still stared at it blankly before recalling the lessons that Tony had given him in coding.  
  
He started poking around the wires-- not moving them, but seeing where they were connected. Whoever had made the device seemed to have color-coded them.  
  
_Hmm, the red one...well, that'll have to go there, and the green is actually fine where it is--_  
  
He got to work, carefully. He was thankful that Tony had thought to include a soldering iron and solder in his suit, mostly because Peter was always jumping between patrolling and messing around with tech at Stark Industries without stopping to breathe in between. So he disconnected and reconnected the wires to the tiny computer, before finally connecting it to a wire in his suit.  
  
Lines of code appeared before his eyes and Peter grinned in satisfaction.  
  
A gunshot sounded again, only missing Peter due to the tiny voice that warned him it was coming. Ignoring the gunshot noises the best he could, Peter got to work on the code, switching around the lines carefully.  
  
The work wasn't hard, just time-consuming, and the more that Peter worked, the more worried he became. Whoever had done this knew how the suit worked, knew how it was wired, and knew how it was coded.  
  
This was an inside job.  
  
He finished the code, sent it back to the computer, then pulled up the photo his suit had taken of the original inside of the disk. He pulled it back apart, carefully, then reconnected it. He snapped the disk's two halves back together, then, and stabbed the device's three tiny prongs back into his suit.  
  
The excessive webfluid flow on his feet shut off immediately and his display blinked.  
  
"Hello, Peter," said Karen.  
  
"Oh thank God," Peter replied, grinning. "Ready to kick some butt?"  
  
He pulled his feet out of their restraints with ease, shot out a string of webfluid, and launched into battle.  
  
"Watch ou--" Peter slammed into the speaker, cutting him off, and quickly webbed the man's hands together. The other two villains turned to him, shooting at him in panic, but he dodged easily and kicked them both unconscious.  
  
"Good job," Karen commented.  
  
Peter nodded, but his satisfaction was muted by a growing sense of dread.  
  
Who were these people?  
  
And how did they know so much about his suit?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did originally write this as a standalone story, but I'm curious if anyone would want this to be continued? I find it a fun concept to play with, and you can see I couldn't help but hint at a larger conflict.
> 
> Any feedback is welcome!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter brings the goons to Tony. It's not until he reaches the elevator that he realizes that his actions might not have been entirely legal.
> 
> OR
> 
> Spiderman and Iron Man uncover a conspiracy-- and they both desperately hope it's not as big as they fear.

It wasn’t until Peter was in the Stark Towers elevator, carefully propping up three webbed-up goons against the wall so that they didn’t fall over, that he realized he probably was supposed to have turned these people in to the police.

“Where to?” asked the voice of FRIDAY.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter replied automatically. Wait, wasn’t Mr. Stark supposed to be doing something important today? He’d mentioned it to him earlier...

The doors of the elevator slid closed before he could fully process the realization.

There was the familiar dropping of his stomach as the elevator started to rise. One of the goons made a noise that was probably supposed to be a growl, but instead came out as a sort of whimper. Peter leaned against the elevator corner, suddenly questioning his life choices, as the elevator shot up.

He hadn’t really even thought about what he was doing-- his first instinct, like always, was to go to Mr. Stark. Especially since this time the issue actually concerned him.

The elevator shuttered as it past the fifty-second floor, as usual. Peter belatedly remembered promising Mr Stark that he’d climb down the elevator shaft to try to figure out why it was doing that. One of the webbed-up goons started to tip over, and Peter instinctively sent out a spritz of web fluid and fastened the man to the wall.

The elevator dinged open, and they opened to reveal Mr Stark, looked mildly confused. The expression quickly changed to mild annoyance at the excessive amounts of webfluid coating his elevator.

“Spiderman,” he said in a semi-exasperated tone, “what are you doing here?”

Peter blinked. The elevator started to close, and he quickly webbed the sensor. The doors opened back up abruptly and stayed there.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Are you just here to destroy my elevator, or…?”

Peter snapped out of his frozen state. “Uh, no, Mr. Stark. You see, these people, well theyhavesomethingthatcanhackoursuitsandIthoughtyou’dwanttoknowaboutitand--”

Tony sighed. “Just get them in here, calm down and repeat everything you just said.”

Peter nodded. “Right, right.” He grabbed one of the goons from their leaning position against the wall and shuffled into the room guiltily, depositing the person on the ground rather unceremoniously. He grabbed the second, then stared at the third critically, who was webbed to the wall. In hindsight, that had not been the best plan.

The goon let out a muffled scream as Peter approached him and yanked him away from the wall. Some of the elevator’s wallpaper came with the fluid, and Peter chanced a glance at Mr. Stark, whose expression had gone from exasperated to annoyed.

Peter exited the elevator and deposited the second two alongside the first.

Tony sighed. “Kid, whatever you were saying, it sounded important. Now slow down, and repeat what you told me.”

Peter swallowed. “Um. So, I was out patrolling, right? And I was in a ghost town because I’d received a tip-off about gang activities that operated from there. And they _were_ there, and they hit me with something, but I barely felt it so I thought I was fine--” Peter took a deep breath after realizing he hadn’t really _been_ breathing while he’d been telling his story. “Anyway, it turned out they attached this thing-- virus? Probe? Actually I’m not sure what to call it, but it hacked into my suit and deactivated Karen and set off the emergency web-fluid despositers on my feet to trap me on the beam I’d paused on.”

Tony tapped his fingers against the table absently. “So you took it apart and recoded it.”

Peter nodded in agreement. “Right. But I was looking at it, and clearly it was made by someone who really knew our suits. Like they had blueprints and the firewalls and the specs and everything. It was all very precise and specialized.”

Peter opened up his left hand, which had been tightly gripping the disk ever since the encounter, and presented it to Tony. The billionaire spun it around, inspecting the outside carefully, before turning back to Peter. “How does it open?”

The high-schooler shrugged. “Well, I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I ran a current through it and it clicked?” He paused, realizing that required a bit more elaboration. “I was on a copper beam-- which really was a fire hazard to be honest, no wonder the place is abandoned-- and I rerouted some power through my suit into it? And then laid it against the beam?”

Tony hummed. “How much power?”

Peter squinted, trying to remember. “Around 15 volts I think? It’s hard to tell, because I kind of blew a hole in my suit to get it to work.” He pointed to the part in question, which was a little above his elbow.

One of the goons made a noise, causing both superheroes’ attentions to return to them.

“I’m not really sure why I brought them here,” Peter admitted. “I just--well, if my suit was hacked yours could be too, so I felt like I needed to get you all of the information I could?”

“You realize this is questionably legal, right?” Tony commented, sounding almost amused.

The teen winced. “Well…”

Tony sighed. “I told you not to do anything I would do.”

One of the goons, the tallest one, had started to wiggle. The webfluid was clearly starting to wear off. Peter raised his hand, but Tony grabbed him by the wrist to stop him. They watched the man struggle to a sitting position in silence that felt drenched with a dread that neither of them could quite explain.

The man managed to sit up with some difficulty, and spat off the gag with a big more struggling. He coughed once, twice, before his face twisted into a strange grin.

“Long live the Jade Pyramid,” he spat, before biting down hard on something in his mouth. He began foaming at the mouth, and both Tony and Peter swore audibly as they realized what he had done.

Tony hit the man in the throat violently, in a last ditch effort to save him-- but it was far too late. The man twitched three times before going still.

Silently, Peter re-webbed the two remaining goons. He wasn’t going to let them get their jaws free enough to imitate the man who now laid still on the floor.

Both superheroes stood in silence, the creeping dread they had both been feeling rising farther as they wondered just how big the Jade Pyramids was.

Who were they? What did they want?

_How on earth did they get into our suits?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, look, i actually updated! What is this?
> 
> I'm sorry it's not as long as the first chapter! Chapter vary in length, obviously, and for this fic they'll probably be on the really short side tbh. They'll at least be 1k, but I doubt I'll ever update more than 2k. This is so you guys actually get content more consistently instead of getting a lot all at once with giant breaks in between.
> 
> Hopefully you liked this so far! If you have any suggestions, criticisms or other comments, feel free to leave them below!


End file.
